


Deleted Scenes from X-Men 7 (the Crucible)

by NotQuiteHydePark



Category: New Mutants (Comics), New X-Men: Academy X, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fluff, Meta, Other, Polyamory, Purim, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:22:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22991656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotQuiteHydePark/pseuds/NotQuiteHydePark
Summary: “No one asked you to sleep with me, Slim.”“Actually someone did.”
Relationships: Douglas Ramsey/Warlock (New Mutants), Jean Grey/Logan (X-Men)/Scott Summers, Logan (X-Men)/Scott Summers
Comments: 3
Kudos: 37





	Deleted Scenes from X-Men 7 (the Crucible)

“Scott?”

“Logan?” Scott settles more firmly into his own comfy chair.

“Where did we get these comfy chairs?”

“Remember the movie theater in Salem Center with all those enormous reclining seats? The ones where you used to see Fast and Furious movies?”

“Still love those movies, Slim. Why?”

“That’s where we got the chairs. Sentinels blew up the mall—“

“Again?”

“Third time’s the charm apparently. Anyway, the projection booth was totaled, but we kept most of the chairs.”

“I didn’t know it was a mutant-owned business.”

“It wasn’t. We just took the chairs. Except for the ones you left great big triple claw marks in.”

“It was a really good Fast and Furious movie, Slim.”

“Aren’t these chairs great, though? Do you fall asleep in them too, just watching the big blue Earth and wondering if we can save it one more time?”

“Nope.”

“Couldn’t sleep?” Scott asks, turning to face his rival and friend.

“Never do.”

“Literally never, Logan? Come on. I’m sure I’ve seen you sleep.”

“You’ve seen me sleep with people, Scott. In fact you’ve slept with me. Not the same thing as literally seeing me sleep.”

“Have you tried cutting your hair?”

“No, Scott. Have you tried cutting my hair?”

“I’ve thought about it, honestly. Dude. You are extremely hairy.”

“And you love it. Dude. You have been known to run both hands through my chest hair.”

“Not when I’m trying to sleep. Too hot for covers and it’s too cool without them.”

“No one asked you to sleep with me, Slim.”

“Actually someone did.”

“Good point, and I’m glad you said yes. But it’s literally impossible to cut my hair. It grows back to this length right away. Like, within the hour.”

“Including those pointy tufts on the side, Logan? Really?”

“Including those tufts on the side. Can we just sit here like men in love with the same woman, drink our coffee, and enjoy a quiet moment delighted that she’s alive and likes us both? For once?”

“I guess.”

“But here’s a thing—“

“What did I just say?”

“Jean and I are taking the kids to Chandilore and we were wondering if you wanted to come along…”

“Jeannie in a bikini.” Barely audible, Logan whistles.

“Scott in a Speedo,” Scott counters.

“I love the way you fill out a Speedo.”

“And I, you.”

“Should we really be flirting when we are about to face issues of life, death, and resurrection?”

“We’re X-Men, Logan. That’s what we do.”

*

Scott pushes himself, standing ramrod-straight, through the forest of red ferns and purple foliage until he finds Doug and Warlock’s retreat. They’re sitting in two more of the salvaged movie-theater chairs, with a kind of enormous wooden mask-face behind them, as if they had been conversing with the face of Krakoa itself, which turns out to be true. Warlock is grinning, his eyes wide, very much as if he and Doug, or he and Doug and somebody else, had been doing something that can’t be depicted on panel.

Doug takes a while to greet Cyclops too.

“Did I just interrupt a three-way with two nonbinary nonhuman participants?” Scott asks. “Because our readers would love to know that such things happen on Krakoa, but I wish you luck making them visible on-page.”

“And I, you,” Doug replies.

“Did I… did I just… I guess not. Seen Kurt around?”

The great wooden face of Krakoa seems to wink back at him.

*

Exodus is telling the children a story. “Her name was Scarlet Witch.”

“Pretender! Pretender!” one of the children shouts. The child has Quentin Quire’s haircut, but their innocent look makes clear that they’re nothing like Quentin. 

“Stop! Stop! We don’t say her name!” says another young mutant with a disc on her head and a floppy cap. A third mutant with dark curly hair takes out a Purim grogger and starts to spin it so that it makes a loud noise.

Exodus continues with his spiel. “She erased the powers of one million mutants. She made mutant into man. She made so many of us less. She spoke the words…”

The Quentin-like kid raises their hand. “Wasn’t it actually then-Marvel editor Jeph Loeb who spoke the words, making the depressingly and provably false claim that Marvel readers would empathize with mutants only if we again became so rare and so endangered that any threat to us seemed existential? As if X-fans could not see themselves in a larger and less persecuted minority?”

“Oh! Oh!” The long-haired, hat-wearing mutant starts jumping up and down. “Is that like the thing where the cis only give us our basic civil rights if they think that the only genuine trans people are binary trans kids who’ve felt trapped in the wrong body since early childhood and get so depressed about it that they attempt self-harm, and nobody else counts as trans?”

“Silence!” says Exodus. “No more metaphors.” After a pause in the dreadful firelight, the square-jawed mutant continues. “That’s what they do—the worst of them—they decide who gets to be trans. How to talk, how to think what to believe. But what do we say to them?”

“No more gatekeeping.”

“No more gatekeeping.”

“No more.”

*

“Tracy?”

“Ramon?” The kid with the disc and the cap raises their hand again, speaking softly so Exodus cannot hear.

“This crucible thing?”

“What about it?”

“How is this duel to the death with Apocalypse—how is that not gatekeeping?”

“Shhhh. The ceremony is starting.”

*

Scott tilts his head so the visor reflects the sun’s glare, but won’t get in Kurt’s eyes. “So this whole duel till Apocalypse kills you thing is a pragmatic compromise, Kurt?”

“One might say so. We had to give de-powered mutants some way to recover their powers, and yet we could not simply have them all taking their own lives in the hope of resurrection. This way we have a ceremonial rebirth, and we re-power just one at a time.”

“Also Apocalypse gets to kill mutants, which used to be his chief form of recreation. Seems to me he’s rather enjoying this part.”

“The Lord finds a use for the Devil, Scott. And the Devil does his job, whether or not he sees it that way, for the Lord.”

“Got it. But Kurt? Do you believe this is the Lord’s work? In your heart of hearts, do you believe it?”

Five pages later we see Ororo, standing beside Charles Xavier and Apocalypse. We know what she believes.

Then we see Melody, flying and smiling. We know what she believes too.


End file.
